That sort of thing doesn’t count anymore, since the Lithuanians lost their uniqueness due to Wootz Steel from the Dravidians.
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Well to be honest Leitis is still a fast, cheap cavalry unit, and Dravidians have almost no cavalry at all, still, it’s not like the blacksmith bonus isn’t nice, because I’d rather have that than nothing, it’s just that maybe there are more elegant ways to buff them.
Some other ideas. Elite Battle Elephant, Siege Elephant, Elite Archer Elephant upgrades are 50% cheaper. That will help them with a huge powerspike in the Imperial Age. Upgrades to unlock the elite version.
That, or simply unlock the Elite Battle Elephant upgrade for free. Also a good power spike to do a elephant rush. Upon reaching the Imperial Age, their battle elephants auto upgrade into Elites.
Cheaper or even free elephant upgrades are exactly what I considered before coming up with the idea to share armor, and I rejected them since they would be too powerful.
These will only make their otherwise strong late game stronger, but will do little to help them in the mid game where they need help.
Dravidians are ok on water and hybrid maps, they have insane build orders with 200 extra wood, they get FU arbas and infantry and their imp UT is insane, they also have excellent skirmishers.
Having 2 more villagers per TC when getting to the next age, I wouldn’t call this an “insane” eco bonus, sure it helps, but the lack of choice in tech tree makes this bonus rather useless, what are eco bonuses good for if you can’t use them properly, you’re talking about booming, i’m talking about not dying the first 20 minutes because most civs can do knights skirms or siege and steamroll you. At least if you had some decent castle age cav but no, you just have ■■■■■■ light cav and useless elephants which by the way are still convertable, since its random.
Most of the time you’ll get like 10 to 14 vills total with the first bonus if you manage to get more than 3 TCs before getting imp, and the imp unique tech is just for booming maps, most of the time you won’t have the luxury to tech it since it costs a lot of resources. the 2 additional vils is interesting feudal and less and less usefull going castle age and imperial. Then you’re comparing to khmers or vikings. Dude, khmers have hussars, skirms and halbs almost FUed, they have cavaliers, siege ram, arbalester, a really strong UU since the last patch. Their farm eco bonus helps a lot for the hussar spam. Vikings have one of the best eco bonus hands down, they suck in late game but they have very strong timings at least…
People are really exaggerating when thinking getting more vils going through the ages is strong, sure its interesting in feudal age, but it takes times to make this bonus profitable and most of the time you will lose early/middle castle age because you have no viable options. So yeah you probably will have to play passive all game and die to arba bbc or hussar raids cuz you have no mobility. You also have almost no good trash unit except skirmishers.
And to finish it, I wouldn’t listen too much tourney casters about this or that. Every time there are new civs, they think this particular thing is OP when in reality it’s just plain bad.
Honestly, just give bengalis at least hussars and knights for castle age, even cavalier.
It’s:
- Hindustanis (they are like top 5-top 10 atm on Arabia)
- Bengalis (top 15 on Arabia)
- Gurjaras (maybe top 20)
- Dravidians (bottom 5)
Yes bcz Khmer more attack means more trample damage which makes them even with Bengalis.
True. They need a military bonus to address the issue of not having any meta unit in Castle age outside of UU or a defensive bonus that will help them to boom safely and reach to their full potential imperial age army combo.
A second upgrade to Armored Elephant, Heavy Siege Elephant. 11
They are the only one with one UU among all the 4 new civs. So a second one is needed. (The one UU is already two in one though).
I also think it is a bit exaggerated. But it is still a top 10 eco bonus in open maps and top 5 in Arena imo.
Vikings actually have even more villagers than Bengalis until you reach Imperial age.
I’d say 30% at max. But not only it is similar to Bulgarians, but also I’ll save that for a potential civ with full blacksmith tech tree.
And I’ll also reject them as not relevant in castle age where the help is more needed.
If giving thumb rings is seen as an ugly solution, then giving knights and hussars is even uglier.
Their crossbowmen were actually decent enough for the early Castle age. However, I found that Bengalis players often tend to yearn to fully booming and get to the Imperial age directly, while neglecting the defenses in the Castle age, resulting in insufficient troops to defend when they encounter an early attack by their opponents. Therefore they are easy to be targeted by opponents even on closed maps.
I wonder how people play this civ, on paper they are a very strong fast arbalest civ and imho they should be played similarly to Vikings. Going elephants with this civ in the mid game Is a massive blunder imho, elephants are a complete waste of res in most games and i wouldnt rule out that people Is probably too much attracted by elephant bonus (which Is maybe only useful late game) to figure out the real strengths of the civ
I try often to spectate high level games on the ladder, but Bengalis are picked very rarely by high level players (1800+ ELO).
In the games I spectated so far I only saw archers=>crossbows=>ratha/arbs+light cav and trebs.
I saw once a 2 militia drush, archer=>xbows=>elephant archers + trebs but at the point the Bengalis player went elephant archers he had 30 vills lead on the opponent thanks to better micromanaged raids with xbows, the opponent was japanese who opened with 5 or even 6 Maa, then archers, but failed to do any meaningful damage and slowed his feudal age archers too much imho, at the point he switched he had to turn on defense and was closed on his half map.
Both players were around 1900 ELO.
I’ve yet to see monk play or Siege Elephant, only trebs and mangos for now, I bet that’s the difficulty to switch from wood/gold to food heavy composition.
In team games it depends on the map, on Black Forest I obviously saw Battle Elephants and Siege Elephants, on Arena/Arabia I saw mostly Rathas, even by Tatoh. Ratha+light cav/halbs.
I see them picked quite often on Nomad.
By comparison I see a lot of Hindustanis and Gurjaras picks instead, both in 1v1 and team games, even Dravidians are more common.
All 3 need a buff imo especially Dravidians. Bengalis and Gurjaras aren’t in a terrible spot but they could definitely use some help. But we’re talking about Bengalis here so I’ll only throw in my suggestions for them.
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Give them a Fishing bonus. The Bengal region is known for its vast supply of fish. In game they have one of the most expensive armies to train and maintain. Giving them a fishing bonus would address both historical accuracy and their need for a buff to food gathering. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE their 2 Vill spawn bonus but a bonus like this one would be really great for them too.
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Thumb Ring is missing from their tech tree for a reason i.e. Rathas. The 15% attack speed buff would only affect their ranged version but not the melee version as it only works on archers. Instead buff Paiks to incorporate the 100% accuracy, and possibly buff the attack speed from 20 to some other number if needed (And nerf their base reload time to compensate).
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I am ok with Bengalis not having Knights, because their cavalry wasn’t remarkable historically anyway but their elephants were the best, and that is well reflected in the game. That, and they have Rathas as the alternative. However I do think in addition to the above suggestion to Paiks Rathas could use a few small buffs, like to their HP and/or base armour/pierce armour. Rathas supposedly deal trample damage in melee (In Advanced Genie Editor it mentions they also deal damage to nearby units), but I’ve never actually seen this in action. If this is intended to be the case that would actually be really cool to have for them.
It’s really strong but it’s strengths depends on how you play it. In early feudal it’s better than viking bonus but if the game goes extended feudal it will fall off conpared to free wheel. Similar in castle age. So you want to go rather fast to castle age and tcs early to further solidify your advantage which is why…
… I don’t is true. Obviously it depends on how the game goes but if both players have similar castle age times bengalis should have the vil advantage while vikings will have more food (you don’t research hand card until late castle age or at some point in imp normally) so they’ll go faster to imp. With bengalis it makes sense anyways to add 4 tcs oftentimes while vikings usually wanna play faster to imp and arb.
Well if your eco is strong enough you can play defensive with skirms mangos monks pikes and/or castles. That doesn’t change that you have not a lot of offensive options in castle age which is why the civ is kinda awkward to play so a lot people just go ratha.
Well what you describe is a lacking tech tree which is true ofc. Doesn’t change that their eco is super strong. So imo the civ might need changes to military options.
Well no as I said they’d lose the other bonus for siege elephants. Otherwise double reduction for these things would indeed be op.
We’ll see about that. My prediction is easy top 10 (for basically any land map).
But wheelbarrow costs you 3 villagers worth of time. So Vikings will be ahead by 1 villager. After castle if you delay Hand Cart, then yes Bengalis will get back to lead with 1 villager instead of 4 over generic.
That was a joke.
Things is oftentimes you do wheelbarrow only after you added 3 tcs if both go for boom approach. If it’s an aggressive game you’ll probably get it before that though. And with bengalis you can choose how to distribute your extra vils so you shouldn’t be later to adding tcs if that’s your strategy choice. However you will have less food income than civs like vikings khmer or slavs for sure so from what I have seen and played so far you trade vil advantage for later imp. Main factor for that is how early game goes ofc.
I know I’m repeating myself…
Buff elephants. Buff battle elephants. Buff elephant archer. Nerf Malay discount.
Bengalis and drav will both be buffed. Both civ are MEANT to use elephants. It’s like having bad cavalry archers and then having a civ rely on CA and expecting that civ to work.
The same goes for militia line for drav. Make it a more viable unit in the mid game.
The civs themselves have very good civ bonuses.
Likely due to area attack accounting for the rest of the damage needed? So most pikes+ will die in 3 or less direct hits anyway? Well I’m assuming that was the intention
What about making extra town centers also spawn 2 extra villagers in castle age?
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Most likely, as I said in large battles this is hardly relevant.
What is relevant is the extra resistance against halbs/pikes/camels which can snowball easy and imho makes Bengalis EBE #1 or at least tied for #1 as the strongest.
But you have to field a lot of them, which is… problematic 
Uhmm, this would likely net you 8-10 free vills in early castle age, it seems an easy way to make them quite overpowered on maps where early aggression is not feasible (Arena, BF, island maps, other closed maps).
I’d rather have military bonus or adjustments in the tech tree instead.
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If anything I think it would be as important in Arabia aince they would be able to give them an additionql 4 vills by early castle age and keep up with the early feudal eco boost they get on arabia. You can remove the extra villagers in imp to balance Arena or BF
Don’t you just end up with a case similar to cumans were. You’re pigeonholed into early booming in order to access your civ bonus potential. So maps where this is beneficial you are even better off, and ones where you can’t, you suck even harder?
And this is compounded by the fact that your opponent knows this. So if they don’t go 1 TC all in , then they’re doing it wrong 
I wonder how their eles/ratha would fair if they reverted paiks back to 30%. Especially since the EA is fairly inaccurate. Which hurts them even more due to lack of massing and lower dps
Seems to me you’re cherry picking points to make Bengalis look bad while ignoring the weaknesses of civs you’re comparing them to. E.G. You didn’t even mention their free villager/age bonus, but justified the Dravidians not needing a buff because of their wood bonus, which might be comparable but weaker long term/if it doesn’t snowball into a military advantage fairly quickly. Not saying that you don’t have some points, and that Bengalis may need a buff, I just don’t see any kind of consistency with the logic. To some degree, Bengalis fit a well-established trope of a civ that is fairly strong on closed maps and in team games, but can struggle in open 1v1s (other civs like this are Koreans, Portuguese, Spanish). Maybe they need some tweaks or buffs here or there, but pretending they have no eco bonus or strong game modes is disingenuous. Yes, they have an awkward mid-game that their late game may not be strong enough to justify (to early to be sure though IMO), so there may be appropriate changes for them and the other new civs in the next patch.
Seems like something I wouldn’t to combine with possibly the strongest/most well rounded Battle Ele.
And…they also have huge weaknesses. Lack of any viable cav + BBC means they can’t make anything that isn’t hard-countered by Siege Onagers and they have no raiding unit. Last night I found out both how good Sarc UT Siege onagers are, and how Dravidians have no good option against SOs in general, and even pretty iffy options vs. good scorp civs (SO with no Siege Engineers).
I agree, maybe something like the old Indian villagers +10% faster fishing bonus (since Dravidians already got the extra carry).
This may be a good option, although I’m wary of buffing Ratha, since it seems to be a pretty solid unit already (though I don’t think its OP). Maybe something that gives Bengalis a bit more of an edge in late Feudal/early Castle before they can get to Ratha.
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